Did you manage to solve this problem? It may have something to do with USB. I can't really say for sure and most of my Googling hasn't shown clear indication of the cause, let alone a solution. I have an Acer lappy too and though it runs on Windows 7 (I'm positive it's not the poor quality of the OS, thank you very much! haha) it also crashes to bits and freezes up completely. However, since I don't use the Acer that often, I haven't really sat down and tried to solve the problem. I just notice that it gets really cranky when I plug in a USB flash drive.

Just to add - I was considering zapping Windows and installing Ubuntu on the Acer lappy with the hope that the Ubuntu USB drivers may perform better but so far, from your experience, I'm not holdin my breath.